Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Commercials should be more careful

I saw two commercials that worried me-- one on a deep and philosophical level, and the other simply because it was THAT stupid.

The first commercial showed pretty young adults lounging everywhere-- on piles of newspapers, on a grassy hi-way median, in the middle of a bustling train station. They were all looking at their cell phones and they were pretty much holding them right in front of their faces. The young adults weren't paying attention to anything except their phones. It turns out that the commercial belongs to Samsung and they are advertising some kind of television/entertainment enhancement that their cellular phones will feature in the near future. Their slogan was something like "make the world your livingroom." Great. More things to stare at that aren't real things. More ways to be a complete asshole in public. More ways to recede into our extraodinarily dull minds.

The other commercial was for a treatment for genital herpes. It started out with a young attractive couple hiking, and then it cut to the man who announced "I have genital herpes, but I don't let it hold me back." Again, great. Now we have men advising men to go nuts when they have genital herpes, and women thinking it's perfectly fine to sleep with brazen herpesvirus reservoirs. Maybe it's the new paranoid government public health side of me shining out, but really. You SHOULD hold it back when you have genital herpes-- case closed.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do not consider my mind "extraordinarily dull." In fact, i have quite a good time in there.

Lena Webb said...

I was referring to MOST people, and to people of the future. You, Brendon, are certainly not most people and you most definitely are not yet a person of the future!

And until you're watching television on your cell phone, you can consider your mind a veritable playground of excitingness.

Anonymous said...

Those commercials may be a tad much, but have you seen the new "Join Our Holocaust!" campaign for Burger King? It's as if their marketing team just doesn't get it: Jewish People don't go to BK, and no, I will not join their holocaust, seriously.

Anonymous said...

brendon, (sniff) you stink.

lena, i've not the strength to agree with you on this one. but you're right..

let the bastards "jack-in" all they want.. in ten years they'll come out with a study saying talking on the phone is addictive, like coffee. and you won't be allowed to do anything fun legally, except drink. which you'll need to do anyway, to drown out the sound of everyone making SHITE mini-movies on their cell phones.

think about that, coke will come out with ads cosponsered by the cell phone company they end up merging with.

"this is barn, and coke gave me a cell phone to make a movie about my travels across america."

by the end of that trip i'll blow my brains out knowing how disconnected i am from all that truly matters.

fuck you samsung. i'm no luddite i just don't like your style you think you're the king shit.. well fuckk off thats my turf. yeaah!

Anonymous said...

Hey Lena. I like all of you have started a blog out of boredom. The address is:

http://shanksisheady.blogspot.com

I think the fact that companies currently spend more on advertising than they do on producing their products is clearly assign of the apocalypse. So start freaking partying like it's the end of the wrold! Bust out the dank small pox! Hooray!